feminism

Politits is a made-up word, but you can’t say it on the radio.

Earlier this year, six women artists in Rochester formed the Politits Art Coalition (PAC), a grassroots feminist art group. Jacquelyn O’Brien, PAC founder and Rochester-based sculptor, came up with the idea as a means to create solidarity within the feminist artistic community.

“What I felt like I missed most was what I read about in second-wave feminism,” she said. “And that’s a group of women entirely and intrinsically dependent on ourselves.”

Indie music, cheap beers and interesting conversation makes for a usual Friday night at Spark Contemporary Art Space. This past Oct. 2, feminist punks clad in floral prints, combat boots and bandanas screamed, crooned, strummed and shredded raw emotion, angst and revolution in front of a rowdy crowd nodding and moshing along.

A scholar of black women’s intellectual history and thought explained the struggles blacks and women are currently facing and ways to fight injustice in a speech for Black History Month Thursday night.

Dr. Brittney Cooper, an assistant professor of women’s and gender studies and African studies at Rutgers University, urged students not to accept the status quo and to fight for the big questions. “If you see a good fight, get in it,” she said.